


Closet Romantic

by MistyBeethoven



Series: The Exorcist and the Dead Girl [3]
Category: Constantine (2005)
Genre: Acceptance, Chastity, Closets, Cuddling, Dead People, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love, Romantic Soulmates, Sex vs Love, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-25 14:55:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21358075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: After Papa Midnite comments of the lack of John and Isabel's sex life, the dead girl is nowhere to be found.
Relationships: John Constantine & Papa Midnite, John Constantine/Isabel Dodson, Papa Midnite & Isabel Dodson
Series: The Exorcist and the Dead Girl [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1511984
Kudos: 3





	Closet Romantic

Isabel Dodson would often look at John Constantine when he was not aware that she was. She liked to steal small glimpses of him, knowing he was probably the type who would get embarrassed if he was stared at for too long. Constantine liked darkness and shadows, having suffered the same painful vision filled childhood which she had endured. Isabel had sucessfully committed every pore of her boyfriend's to memory and loved every new line which appeared, although, she would never mention their arrival to her lover.

Lover

She often had to catch and correct herself whenever the word came into her head. John Constantine and she were not _lovers_. They never had been and they likely never _would_ be either for that matter; God had offered her as a gift to his favorite fallen exorcist but He had not included her with the proper equipment required for that specific physical intimacy.

This was a truth that upset Dodson all the more for the fact that she thought it upset Constantine. He had intimated it more than a few times that he would have liked to have made love to her. He was always making slightly suggestive remarks to her to put her mouth and hands to good use. But the dead girl had been too shy to as of yet, secretly worried that if she were to try it she'd be sent back to Heaven and away from John Constantine.

So she enjoyed just looking at the man instead, dressed and undressed, contenting herself with the sight of him and touching him but without all the usual sex stuff. 

* * *

One night, accompanying John to the Midnight Club when the exorcist was in need of some information regarding a succubus, Isabel found herself being formally introduced to Papa Midnite: one of Constantine's few remaining friends after Gabriel's devious plot to end the world.

"This is Isabel Dodson," John introduced casually as if bringing a girl wearing a hospital gown to the club was nothing less than normal.

"Enchanted," Midnite said eyeing her curiously. "Dodson, is that..."

"Yeah," the exorcist said in irritation. "She's Angela's sister."

"The one who killed herself?"

"Yes," Isabel answered, annoyed that the club's owner was ignoring her presence in order to talk to John instead. Of course, it was a miracle the man could even see her when not many others did.

"John must care for you a lot," Papa Midnite said. "Those on the other side are not allowed to come back usually."

Isabel and Constantine exchanged a look of befuddlement. "You mean it's happened before?" John asked.

The handsome demon smiled slyly. "On the rare occurrence. I take it you be smooth around the bend, huh girl?"

Dodson blushed and John Constantine grabbed Midnite and rammed him up against a wall, the demon suprisingly letting him. "This is neutral ground, John," Midnite reminded. "But taking into account your sexual frustration, I'll let it slide this once."

Isabel came to her boyfriend's side and placed a hand on his shoulder, letting him know that it was all right. Slowly John let Midnite down so his feet touched the floor again. "So why did you bother darkening my doorway, Constantine?" the demon asked, straightening his collar.

"I need help hunting down a succubus," John stated calmly.

"Ohhhh..." the other man said, fighting a returning smile. "That thirsty are we?"

In one second, Papa Midnite was back up against the wall as Isabel Dodson pleaded with John Constantine to behave himself.

In the end, though, Midnite's information turned out to be good and Constantine quickly found and disposed of the succubus before it managed to have its way with yet another unsuspecting, yet not completely complaining, teenage boy. The exorcist did it in his usual effective and no nonsense way but Isabel found her thoughts kept returning to the Midnight Club's owner's words and was unwillingly jealous of the succubus being able to do something that she, herself, could not.

Arriving back at the apartment, John and Isabel both were quiet and the woman found herself unable to look at her constant companion, afraid of what she might see written on the face that she loved to steal glimpses of.

* * *

When John Constantine awoke the next morning it was to find the dead girl gone. The spot in the bed beside him was empty and his arms held on to nothing but the pillow where her head usually lay. "Isabel!" he called out. In an impatient hurry he searched the rooms for her. Still seeing no sight of the woman, he turned to searching their usual haunts instead.

Eventually returning to the Midnight Club, Constantine angrily confronted Papa Midnite, demanding if he had seen Dodson.

"Not a lock of her pretty curls," the demon replied and John ran an agitated hand through his own hair.

"You don't think He took her back, do you?" he asked.

Papa Midnite shrugged. "For He giveth and He taketh away," he remarked.

John cursed. God and He were on shaky ground and he always lived in the fear that the dead girl would be ordered back to Heaven if he took so much as one wrong step.

"You check everywhere?" Papa Midnite asked.

"Don't help," Constantine snapped. 

The demon just shrugged again.

* * *

Back again in his apartment, John Constantine was entering the closet in order to get a talisman to aid him in his search for Isabel when he saw a pair of bare feet with ten toes peeking out from the corner.

"Isabel?" he said.

"Hello John," the dead girl greeted meekly.

Constantine squatted down to look at his girlfriend; she had obviously spent most of her retreat in tears and her hair was a tangled mess. "Why?" he asked.

"I should be asking you that!" Isabel exclaimed. "Why do you want me?"

John hunkered down on the closet floor next to the woman so that there arms were touching. "I want you because you are my gift from God," he replied. "Not a scary one like seeing demons and all that shit."

"But you can't have sex with me! What do you want with a crazy, suicidal girlfriend that can't have sex?" Isabel Dodson asked, waving her arms in front of her before resting them on her knees.

John quietly considered her statement before making his own. "You're right what would I want with a crazy, suicidal girlfriend that can't have sex?" John asked. He waited until he could picture Isabel's sweet little frown before he added, "I've got you instead."

"But..." Dodson argued.

"You aren't crazy," he explained, taking her into his comforting arms. "Your parents and other ignorant assholes called you that. And you only killed yourself because you were trying to save the world. Which may be foolish but..."

She laughed and buried her face into his shirt. "But I still can't make love to you in that one way," she said softly after a few seconds.

Realizing suddenly how much pain this fact was causing the woman he loved, John Constantine realized that having sex had previously never even really meant that much to him: he'd only obsessed over it because he had fallen in love with Isabel Dodson in the first place.

"To tell the truth," he finally said. "I've never been all that much into it either. Some one night stands and sexual banter...that was my norm. I only want to make love to you because I am in love with you."

Isabel held him a little tighter as she rubbed her head against his chest. "I love you too."

"If we're meant to make love we will someday," the demon hunter professed

"I'll keep praying," the Catholic confessed.

John Constantine held the hospital gown clad girl in the closet just enjoying the way she felt in the dark. Sex seemed irrelevant to the fact that he loved the soul which was inside of her body not the vaginaless body itself.

The comfortable silence was broken when Dodson started to sniff the air.

"I wanted to ask you, what's that odd smell?" Isabel asked. "Demon repellent or something?"

"Yeah," Constantine answered, kissing the top of her curly haired head. "They're called mothballs."


End file.
